


The Choice

by Sondra



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-15
Updated: 2011-07-15
Packaged: 2017-10-21 10:09:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/224022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sondra/pseuds/Sondra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The second series crew is captured by Servalan, who gives Blake a choice between summary execution and death by torture--the catch being that the death he doesn't choose will be inflicted upon Avon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Choice

 

Avon realized the minute he'd done it that he shouldn't have punched Blake in the nose. Of course, Blake shouldn't have made that crack about last-minute heroics either. Still, if he'd managed to keep a tighter grip on his temper, they might not now be in this particular unpalatable pickle.

At least that was the inference Avon drew from Orac's last round of prattling—before all of them, including the computer, were captured by the three pursuit ships from Flotilla 13. Something about luring those ships into the magnetic barrier surrounding Horizon by not attempting to escape on the standby course until the last possible minute, and how Blake would have known not to attempt it. Because Blake would have psyched out the enemy's thought processes. Because Blake had this uncanny talent for psyching out friend and foe alike...

Well, Avon knew Orac was right about that last point where _he_ was concerned. Indeed, Blake's "I thought that was your strong suit" had been just sufficiently reminiscent of his "I'm _not_ surprised" as to prove an irresistible goad. So he'd hauled off and walloped him—leaving Jenna in charge at that critical moment. Whether she'd made a different strategic assessment than Blake would have done, or whether, distracted by the scuffle at her feet, she never even asked Zen to check the position of the attacking craft and simply attempted to flee, he didn't know and would probably not now ever have the opportunity to learn.

For the dreary, unremediable reality was that _Liberator_ had been simultaneously struck in the same spot by three plasma bolts, crippling the ship completely, leaving them easy prey to be boarded and taken into custody...

That had been several days ago. Avon had no way of telling precisely how many, but he estimated that it had taken at least two days to reach the Federation installation where they were now incarcerated and that another two had passed since the ship transporting them had made stationfall. In all that time he'd been kept separated from the rest of the crew—but as he'd not been particularly mistreated, he harbored hopes that the others were getting by equally well...

In the midst of his musings, a pair of armed guards appeared at his cell and indicated that he was to accompany them. When he rose from his cot, they manacled his hands behind his back.

"So it finally begins," he murmured philosophically.

"More likely, ends," responded one of the guards. "Judging by the mood the Supreme Commander is in."

So _that_ was why they'd been merely marking time. Waiting for Servalan's grand entrance upon the scene...

She was waiting for him in the large anteroom to which the guards led him—waiting for all of them, as it turned out. One by one, the members of _Liberator_ 's crew were escorted in, similarly handcuffed. He scanned their faces in the brief moments before they were lined up side by side against the stark white wall: Jenna, Vila, Gan, Cally—and Blake. They all looked as haggard as he felt, and tensely apprehensive, though trying to hide their apprehension. From the abbreviated, stiff nods they tendered one another, he guessed that, like himself, each of them had been held in isolation up to this point.

Servalan's greeting was far less restrained. "Welcome, all. I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to have the entire crew of the _Liberator_ as my guests. Not counting Zen, of course, who regrettably appears to have been damaged beyond repair."

"What are you planning to do with us, Servalan?" Blake demanded. "What are we charged with? Or don't you intend to bother with the formality of a trial?"

"Actually—no, I don't," the woman answered. "Mind you, it's not for any lack of crimes to choose from. You've more than conspicuously distinguished yourselves of late in the illegal activities department. It's just that I've decided your pathetic little cause has attracted far too much publicity as it is. And it's not as if there could be any doubt regarding the outcome of such a trial—so why not cut to the denouement without further delay?"

"Then I assume we're to be killed," Avon put in.

"Killed?" Vila gulped—and Jenna, standing next to him, emitted a sound of quiet exasperation.

"It's always best not to assume too much," Servalan said. "Certainly you needn't assume that you're all facing the _same_ fate."

Blake glanced at Vila, who looked about to buckle under the suspense of Servalan's sadistic toying, and said, "Stop playing games with us. Just tell us what you're going to do."

The Supreme Commander motioned for the guards to remove the rebel leader from the line. Avon watched as they shoved Blake roughly across the floor in Servalan's direction, watched him stagger a bit from inability to use his arms for balance and then regain his poise as he came face to face with her.

"What I'm going to do," she said softly, her voice filled with seductive menace, "is play a very special game—with you."

"And if I refuse to play?"

"You won't." A hush fell over the room as Servalan continued, "I'm going to allow you to choose the manner of your death."

"Old age," Vila suggested in a whisper.

Servalan tossed him a patronizing smile. "Quick, painless dispatch by firing squad," she elaborated, turning back to Blake, "or the protracted agony of however long you last at the hands of my most imaginative interrogators."

The man looked dumbfounded. "I can choose?"

"Absolutely."

"What's the catch?"

Servalan chuckled. "The catch is that the death you _don't_ undergo will be undergone by one of your crew— _that_ one, I think."       

Avon flinched as she thumbed haughtily in his direction, and the guards pushed him forward towards her as they'd done with Blake.

The rebel leader swallowed. "I see. And the others?"

"Oh, a one-way ticket to a penal colony, I should imagine." Vila exhaled with relief—prompting Gan to elbow him sharply.

"But Avon and I die," Blake reiterated.

Servalan shrugged. "The high cost of leadership, I'm afraid—and, in his case, a measure of my estimate of the degree of future threat, should he live." She paused. "So: state your preference.  Which will it be—summary execution or death by slow torture?"

Blake looked long and deeply into Servalan's cruel eyes, his own astonishingly devoid of the anguish Avon expected to see there.

But, of course, that could only be because Blake already knew which choice he was going to make. And _Avon_ knew which choice Blake was going to make.  And Avon knew Jenna and Cally and Vila and Gan knew which choice Blake was going to make. Still, as Blake continued to stare at the woman in silence, Avon felt increasingly uneasy: certain that the rebel leader would sacrifice himself, but surprisingly _un_ certain as to whether or not he _wanted_ him to.

"Blake, let's not be hasty now," he heard his own voice blurt without warning. "Let's make a rational assessment as to which of us is better equipped to withstand—"

"Summary execution."

The words cut into Avon's awkwardly vulnerable attempt to negotiate like a laser knife. In a stabbing flash, he felt as though his innards had been pulverized. When he turned to look at the others, all four faces were frozen in identical portraits of shock. Then he glanced at Servalan's face, and it was obvious that she was no less stunned than the rebel leader's own people. Groping to hide the hurt—to deny its existence to his own heart—he found himself retreating automatically to the familiar refuge of verbal wit. "Why, Blake, how petty of you. It was only a bloody nose."

Servalan, too, had recovered her sense of style. Beaming at the tableau of confusion and disillusionment framed against her white wall, she purred, "Well now, Blake, I fear you've sorely disappointed your followers."

The rebel leader shrugged.  "They'll just have to learn to live with it."

"As _he'll_ have to learn to _die_ with it?"

"Don't concern yourself on my account, Servalan," Avon snarled.

Blake was gazing at the other four, still showing no emotion. "Go ahead," the woman coaxed. "By all means, bid them farewell."

As he slowly approached them, they appeared to shrink back from him—even  though there was no physical space in which they could have done so.

He stood first before Jenna. "I'm glad for you, Blake," she said, with a strange mixture of sincerity and sarcasm. "Glad you'll be spared the worst. But I'm sorry I stayed with you long enough to witness this. I should have thrown in my lot with Tarvin when I had the chance."

"I hope you'll think about Tarvin again later, Jenna," Blake said in a low voice. "I hope you'll think about what you did when the Amagons boarded the _Liberator_." The woman looked utterly bewildered by his words.

When Blake moved on to Vila, the thief cringed visibly. "I just hope she kills you first, as well as fast," he burst out bitterly. "That way you won't have to listen to Avon's screams before you die."

"The judgment seat doesn't become you, Vila," Blake responded serenely. "Consider what _you_ would have chosen before condemning someone else's choice."

In contrast to Vila, Gan moved toward the rebel leader, almost beseechingly toward him. "I believed in you, Blake," he said with unconcealed pain. "I'd have offered to die in your place if I'd been asked."

"Well, as you can clearly see, I'm not worth it." Then, softening, almost embracing the larger man with his eyes in lieu of being able to touch him, "Look after yourself, won't you?"

The woman at the end of the row stiffened, her face streaked with tears she couldn't wipe away. "What—you, too, Cally?" Blake whispered sadly. "Such reproach in those Auran eyes..."

"I'm just wondering when it was that you stopped caring more for your followers and friends than for yourself. There's a price that goes with the life you've elected. If you're not willing to pay it, you have no right to call yourself a leader."

Blake sighed. "Well, that's all academic now, isn't it? I shan't be leading anyone after today. I won't ask you to forgive me or even not to hate me. Not you, Cally. You _have_ the right to sit in judgment."

As he walked away, she called after him, "I don't hate you, Blake. I pity you. You will die alone and silent. Your soul will lie stripped beside you, torn in more shreds than Avon's body."

For an instant, Avon thought that Blake was going to break down. Cally's rebuke seemed to have wounded him more profoundly than any of the others. But then his face hardened again, and he barked, "Let's just finish it, shall we, Servalan?"

Shaking her head from side to side, the Supreme Commander clucked in mock dismay. "Who would have ever predicted it? Quite a pitiful performance for a hero and a legend."

Blake cracked a wry smile. "We all have our off days. Or maybe it's that I'm finally tired of struggling, tired to the marrow of my bones. Or maybe I'm just not willing to suffer for a man who's made his contempt for me plain every chance he's had."

Avon felt something deep inside him wilt at Blake's words. "I never realized I was getting that far under your skin," he said.

"So now you do."

They eyeballed each other coldly. "I must congratulate you, Blake," Avon continued. "You're not the total fool I took you for, after all.  It's even gratifying, to a point, to see my view of human nature vindicated."

"Is it?"

"To a point," he repeated, with a smile. "I'm sure you'll understand if I don't continue to feel gratified while my testicles are being crushed or my eyes burned out of their sockets with a laser probe."

"Better yours than mine," Blake quipped. Behind them, someone from the crew gasped.

Servalan regarded the pair, glowing. "What a shame Travis isn't here to savor this. But unfortunately, he's off chasing a report that you were spotted elsewhere in the galaxy."

"Travis not here to watch me die?" Blake exclaimed. "Why, Servalan, he'll never forgive you. Are you sure you don't want to postpone the festivities until he gets back?"

"Yes, we wouldn't mind waiting," Avon chimed in. "Really, we wouldn't."

Servalan's gaze travelled from one to the other. "Mh-uh," she murmured deliciously.

 

They walked in silence down a long, dimly-lit corridor, flanked on either side by guards, Servalan leading the way. The other four had been returned to their cells, presumably to await transportation to Cygnus Alpha or some equivalent prison planet.

At the end of the corridor, Servalan brought the group to a halt, and Avon turned to face his companion. "Don't feel too badly about the others, Blake."

"Who says I do?"

"Gan is an innocent. Vila is a half-wit. Cally is a dreamer. And Jenna—well,  Jenna is blinded by her personal feelings for you. None of them can quite believe or comprehend what you've done."

"True enough."

"I, on the other hand, comprehend it perfectly."

"Do you?"

"Yes, of course, since I'd have made the same choice."

"Oh, that I know." Their eyes met, and it seemed to Avon that something in the rebel leader's tone (irony?) concealed a whole other layer of meaning he couldn't fathom... But there was no time for further analysis; Servalan was signalling the moment of their separation.

"Goodbye, Avon," Blake said solemnly. An instant later the guards led him through a set of heavy steel doors.

"See you in hell," Avon called out, and the steel doors slammed shut. Then a wave of icy fear gripped him, as the pair of guards assigned to him were joined by four others.

"Blindfold, Avon?" Servalan offered tauntingly.

"I always thought that was at the torturer's discretion," he replied. "Depends on what type of effect he or she is aiming to create, doesn't it?"

The guards forced him up against a metal slab protruding from the wall, and a set of electronically operated restraints secured his body tightly at the shoulders, knees and ankles. "Blindfold, Avon?" Servalan repeated.

"Of course not," he spat contemptuously.

But instead of moving closer to begin the anticipated torture, the guards moved further away—till they were facing him from across the corridor. And then they raised their weapons.

Confusion born of incongruity clouded Avon's brain. "Wait a minute," he protested, "What are you doing?"

Suddenly, from behind that set of steel doors, came the blood-curdling wail of some creature in excruciating agony. As the terrible sound pierced Avon's ears, reality pierced his mind. "Blake?" he mumbled. Then, with mounting desperation, "Blake!" 

Lifting his eyes, he beheld for the first time above the top of the door a sign marked INTERROGATION. 

"You lied, damn you, you lied!" he shouted at the gloating female face in front of him.

"Not really," the woman insisted calmly. "I said Blake would get to express his preference. I never said it would be honored." She motioned one final time to her guards.

Avon scarcely noticed them aiming their guns. He scarcely heard her command to fire or the volley which followed it. To the last instant of his consciousness, he was consumed by the hideous screams emanating from that other room, by the overwhelming realization of what Blake had done, and at what incalculable cost.

 _Yes, it was honored, Servalan_ , he thought with his dying breath.  _Yes, it was_.

 


End file.
